W.H. tries to downplay N.Y. loss

President Barack Obama’s political team kept a blast-zone distance from Democrat David Weprin in the days leading to his defeat in New York’s special election — but that didn’t shield the president and the White House from a fresh wave of Democratic panic and finger-pointing.

On Tuesday night, Republican upstart Bob Turner cast his stunning 54 percent to 46 percent victory in the “safe” Democratic seat formerly held by Anthony Weiner as “a referendum” on Obama’s economic and foreign policy failings. And on Wednesday, the vanquished joined the victor in pointing to Obama as the key factor.

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“The media [and] my opponent somewhat successfully made it a referendum on Obama,” Weprin told Washington Jewish Week, adding that the president, “has some major issues in New York. … I certainly suffered from the effects of that.”

The level of apoplexy among the Democratic rank and file isn’t quite up to the pitch of January 2010, when sure-bet Democrat Martha Coakley lost to little-known Republican state legislator Scott Brown in Massachusetts, erasing Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. But it seemed to put a damper on any renewed optimism engendered by Obama’s well-received jobs speech last week.

Still, the view from the White House was that if ever there was a race that was prey to local quirk and color, this one was it.

Weprin was a truly feeble candidate rated as “third tier” by national Democrats. He was openly antagonistic to the White House, criticizing Obama for challenging Israel. Most important of all, the district, an ungainly Brooklyn-Queens amalgamation that resembles a disfigured Dachshund, is likely to be eliminated when the state’s electoral map is redrawn to reflect New York state’s likely loss of two congressional seats.

“This was a low priority for us. This wasn’t a race that ever held a lot of interest for us,” said a Democratic operative close to Obama who urged panicked Democrats to chill out. “The minute Anthony Weiner exposed himself, we just assumed the district would be eliminated.”

While Obama’s team may not care about the district itself, it reacted with alarm to the theme that Obama is losing ground with Jewish voters, a critical part of his coalition and funding base in states like New York, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey and California.

In a speech in May, Obama said that Israel’s 1967 borders should be a starting point for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, provoking widespread criticism from Jewish leaders. Even though Weprin distanced himself from Obama, Turner rallied Orthodox-Jewish support by linking the assemblyman to the White House.

Last week, a Siena poll of the district showed that 42 percent of its Jewish residents had a favorable view of Obama, compared with a 76 percent approval rating for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat.

“This Republican win in an overwhelmingly Democrat district is a significant indicator of the problem that President Obama has in the Jewish community,” Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks said in a statement.

But it’s hard to minimize losing a House district that hasn’t gone Republican since the election of Warren Harding — and it led to some open fretting by congressional Democrats, a skittish bunch to begin with, about Obama’s possible drag on their hopes for a big comeback in 2012.

“This is the flip version” of Democrat Kathy Hochul’s special election win in upstate New York in May, said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), echoing the downcast mood of the Democratic Caucus.